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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Lives In Musicology: My Life In Writings, Kofi Agawu
Lives In Musicology: My Life In Writings, Kofi Agawu
Publications and Research
Responding to an invitation from the editors of Acta Musicologica to tell the story of his life in musicology, Kofi Agawu describes his upbringing and early education in Ghana and his university studies in the UK and the US. In a career focused on teaching, research, and writing, he outlines a number of intellectual projects involving the analysis of African and European music. He ends by acknowledging renewed discussions of race and identity in the musical academy today, and hints at his own growing interest in African art music.
Structural Analysis Or Cultural Analysis? Competing Perspectives On The "Standard Pattern" Of West African Rhythm, Kofi Agawu
Publications and Research
Polyrhythmic dance compositions from West Africa typically feature an ostinato bell pattern known as a time line. Timbrally distinct, asymmetrical in structure, and aurally prominent, time lines have drawn comment from scholars as keys to understanding African rhythm. This article focuses on the best known and most widely distributed of these, the so-called standard pattern, a seven-stroke figure spanning twelve eighth notes and disposed durationally as <2212221>. Observations about structure (including its internal dynamic, metrical potential, and rotational properties) are juxtaposed with a putative African-cultural understanding (inferred from the firm place of dance in the culture, patterns of verbal discourse, …
Music In The Funeral Traditions Of The Akpafu, V. Kofi Agawu
Music In The Funeral Traditions Of The Akpafu, V. Kofi Agawu
Publications and Research
"Nna lo senu kuwe, fie oresire somoloo?" ("Who laid a mat for him, so that he slept so deeply?") With this rhetorical question, the Akpafu of Southeastern Ghana initiate a period of public mourning occasioned by the death of one of their number.1 The philosophic significance of death in Akpafu culture is twofold. First, it marks the completion of the earthly cycle of existence, birth-circumcision-puberty-marriage-death. Second, it opens the door to a higher, spiritual realm in which the deceased, as an ancestor, takes his place alongside the lesser gods and the Supreme Being in the higher reaches of the hierarchy …